E4 MG EE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 , 2019
nonchalant kind of love, the kind
that gets taken for granted
among family members. It’s also
the kind we need to keep giving
one another, especially now,
when insecurity and intolerance
are at all-time highs.
Erika called me last week to
check in and tell me what was in
season at the Santa Monica farm-
ers market. “Berries, mostly, and
tomatoes,” she said. “Soon we’ll
have stone fruit.”
“Eat some of those tomatoes
for me, and nectarines as soon as
you have them. I miss California,”
I said.
“I miss you,” she said. “I think
of you whenever I cut fruit.”
“I think of you when I cut fruit,
too,” I said.
“We’ll be in each other’s lives
forever,” she said.
[email protected]Galarza is a writer, reporter and
former pastry chef. She is based in
New York City.didn’t, but because as a kid of
immigrants who worked non-
stop, who spent summers with
babysitters and in front of the TV,
I craved that sort of gentle pater-
nal care. I wanted an adult’s
undivided attention. Though
peeling and cutting fruit is a
relatively simple skill, sometimes
it requires effort, attention and
care. When we prepare fruit for
each other, it’s a nudge of love. It’s
a salve for loneliness.
A few years ago, I told Erika
that I loved how she cut fruit for
anyone who was around. She
hadn’t noticed it was a thing she
did until I mentioned it. That day,
she was cutting up peaches and
nectarines. She sliced into them
perpendicular to their main lati-
tudinal line. That sensual crease
hugs the sharp edges of the pit,
making it harder to pry open.
Then she cut each half into wedg-
es, placed one in her mouth, and
pushed the bowl toward me be-
fore starting to wash the dishes.
Cutting fruit for someone is anotice that it is.
When I was a kid, a few times a
year, my father would cut up
mangoes and avocados, the fruit
he grew up picking off trees in
Puerto Rico. There was always a
basket of fruit in the kitchen, but
it was rarely any good. Fruit in
the Midwest, with its long win-
ters, doesn’t really get interesting
until Michigan cherries arrive.
Then come the watermelons,
large and dotted with black seeds.
My mom would cut off one of the
short ends, and as soon as I could
hold a spoon, I would excavate
into the fruit’s belly, preferring
the crisp edges to the sweeter
heart, digging away at it until I
was full and sticky from face to
feet.
I had a babysitter named Lau-
rie when I was 9 or 10. She taught
me how to make pie crust and
sugar cookies and a long-sim-
mered ragu. But I remember that
once, when Laurie offered me an
orange, I pretended to not know
how to peel it. Not because Icause I worry others will pick
over them and they’ll go to waste.
I don’t notice small scars once I’ve
made my sandwich or shakshuka.
In my kitchen I do, however, cut
around big, thick scars; they’ll
likely have an unappealing tex-
ture.An apple with patches of brown,
corky skin. A number of factors
can cause apples to develop
rough, brown skin, but excessive
moisture is a common culprit,
especially amid the wet springs of
the East Coast. Known as russet-
ing, the rough brown skin often
starts around the little dip where
the stem attaches and radiates
outward. The pattern makes per-
fect sense when you consider how
water might collect and drip
down the apple.
Certain varieties, such as Gold-
en Delicious, are more suscepti-
ble to russeting. While the ap-
pearance may be off-putting, it
doesn’t negatively impact flavor.
In fact, some people swear they
taste better.A yellow arugula leaf. Imagine a
tree’s leaves transitioning to fall,
and you’ll get a sense of what’s
happening when a leafy green
fades to yellow. The chlorophyll
that makes plants green is break-
ing down. Your salad greens, cut
off from a light source and the
rest of the plant, use the compo-
nents of chlorophyll to fuel chem-
ical reactions that help keep the
leaf ’s cells alive, said Jim Mon-
aghan, director of the Fresh Pro-
duce Research Center at Harper
Adams University in England.
The arugula is still perfectly
edible but losing nutrients as it
ages. If you see a yellow leaf or
two in your bag of mixed greens,
don’t be concerned, but do make
that salad quickly to maximize
your own nutrient intake. (Seeing
yellow in your potted herbs?
That’s a different scenario, Mon-
aghan said, a sign that you’re
overwatering or that the plants
are short on resources such as
iron, magnesium or nitrogen.)A moldy peach. Aside from not
tasting very good, moldy and rot-
ting food sometimes harbors
pathogens and toxins that can
make you sick. What if it’s just a
little mold? For soft foods, such as
peaches, the USDA recommends
discarding the entire item, be-
cause the mold could have pene-
trated it thoroughly. For harder
foods, such as carrots or bell
peppers, cut off the affected area
and eat the rest. Mitcham said
that one moldy strawberry
doesn’t doom the entire carton.
“I will take it out as quickly as
possible, because otherwise it
might spread to others in the
container,” she said. And, of
course, as with all produce, you’ll
want to give the fruit a good rinse
before eating it.
[email protected]Rachael Jackson writes about
confusing food situations at
EatOrToss.comGive it a try and decide for your-
self.A green potato. A number of
vegetables, including potatoes,
garlic, onions and carrots, will
develop green patches if exposed
to light — the better to photosyn-
thesize. But in potatoes, some-
thing a little extra, and a little
dangerous, happens, too. Natural
or artificial light prompts the
creation of defensive toxins called
glycoalkaloids that can cause di-
gestive distress, headaches and
neurological issues if consumed
in significant volumes.
But before you pitch your pota-
toes at the first hint of green,
consider that such glycoalkaloids
naturally occur in potatoes at
harmless levels and even contrib-
ute to flavor. Additionally, the
human body tends to excrete the
toxins quickly, without incident,
and you’ll probably notice a bitter
taste on the first bite of any
seriously glycoalkaloid-riddled
tubers.
When Nora Olsen, potato spe-
cialist for the University of Idaho,
encounters a green potato, her
first concern is flavor, not poison-
ing her family. Noting that pota-
toes in the United States are bred
for low glycoalkaloid content and
that you need to ingest quite a lot
to get sick, she advises cutting off
lightly greened patches and
pitching any potatoes with large
green areas. If serving young chil-
dren, err on the conservative side.
Potato sprouts also pack higher
levels of glycoalkaloids. Olsen
doesn’t worry much about pen-
tip-sized sprouts and suggests
just rubbing them off when you
wash your potatoes. Bigger
sprouts, along with the “eye” they
sprouted from, should be cut off,
but the potato itself may be dehy-
drated and not worth salvaging.A scarred tomato. Like us, when
fruits and vegetables suffer
scrapes, they naturally seal up the
wounds. Unlike us, however, they
don’t form scabs that fall off to
reveal new tissue. So, the scars,
made up of a woody material with
pathogen-fighting properties,
stick around on tomatoes and
other types of produce.
Seeing a big scar? That’s likely
evidence of an injury that dates
back to the tomato’s early days;
the scar just grew with the toma-
to. Tiny scratches might tell a
story of rough handling during
harvest. If you see an asterisk
pattern on top of your tomato, or
concentric rings, you’re probably
looking at the tomato’s answer to
stretch marks. It likely got an
unexpected influx of water in the
field, grew too fast, cracked open
and then healed the cracks. Many
heirloom tomatoes, not bred for
aesthetic perfection, are more
likely to develop scars.
No matter the cause, if the scar
is dry and not showing mold or
rot, the tomato is safe to eat.
At the store, I deliberately se-
lect tomatoes with dry scars be-PRODUCE FROM E1efficiency that dismisses the
beauty of ripeness. Cutting fruit
is also the kind of time-slowing,
almost meditative practice that
we need to cultivate. Peeling an
orange can be done in the midst
of a daydream, but cutting a
mango or pineapple or apple
requires a bit more effort and
attention. It’s a small way to love
yourself — or others. It’s a nurtur-
ing sort of nourishment.
Emery, my friend Erika’s son,
grew up in Southern California,
the fruit basket of America. Eri-
ka’s kitchen is bright, with win-
dows along one side and expan-
sive countertops, and always, al-
ways a pile of fruit. The Meyer
lemon tree in her backyard is
especially robust, so lemons are
constant. In the cooler months,
piles of speckled green pears,
wine-colored apples and blood
oranges mimic a Renaissance
still-life. Come summer, cherries
tumble out of bowls, and the
fragrance of strawberries and
peaches, musky and sweet, fills
the room. But the most inviting
thing about Erika’s kitchen is the
simple thing she does with the
fruit anytime someone is around:
She cuts it up.
In August, when melons arrive
at Santa Monica’s farmers mar-
kets, Erika picks out heavy ones,
rinses them off, sits them on her
wooden board and cuts into
them, carefully, while chatting or
humming. Swiftly, she halves and
then seeds them before slicing
the fruit into waning-moon
wedges, thin and long, and set-
ting them in a shallow dish. Then
— and this happens so quickly it
could go unnoticed — she takes a
piece for herself and has a bite
while pushing the bowl in the
general direction of anyone who
is around.
This nonverbal invitation is all
the encouragement anyone
needs. Freshly cut, perfectly ripe,
in-season fruit is marvelously
tempting. But the action of pre-
paring fruit is so quotidian that it
doesn’t seem special, which is
precisely why it’s important to
ESSAY FROM E1
Cutting fruit to offer up is an art from the heart
Trim it or toss it? A
guide to past-their-prime
STACY ZARIN GOLDBERG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST fruits and vegetables.
There are a lot of ways to cut a mango. But perhaps the nicest way to do it is for someone else.PHOTOS BY STACY ZARIN GOLDBERG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST;
FOOD STYLING BY LISA CHERKASKY FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTPotato specialist Nora Olsen advises cutting off lightly greened
patches of potato and pitching any with large green areas.Mold can be toxic and can penetrate the entire fruit, so the USDA
advises pitching any peaches or other soft fruit that shows signs.Hit Cocoa Cookies
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